THE INSPIRATION PLACE PODCAST
Scott Aaron: LinkedIn is the perfect demographic for artists that have high value art to sell, because the demographic of the people on LinkedIn, they’re 35 to 55 years old, which means they’re established, right? Number two, they make an average of 75 to $100,000 a year more. So who collects art? It’s people with expendable revenue where it is a hobby to them and one that they enjoy. But also it’s a lot of business professionals.
Speaker 2: It’s The Inspiration Place podcast with artist Miriam Schulman. Welcome to the The Inspiration Place podcast, an Art World insider podcast for artists by an artist, where each week we go behind the scenes to uncover the perspiration and inspiration behind the art. And now your host, Miriam Schulman.
Miriam Schulman: Hey there, it’s Miriam Schulman. And if you’ve ever wondered what’s actually working right now to sell your art online, especially when Instagram engagement is tanking, you’re going to love this episode. Today, I’m joined by the number one LinkedIn expert for entrepreneurs and creatives. He’s an internationally best selling author, speaker, and business coach who’s helped thousands of professionals grow their visibility and generate sales on LinkedIn without ads, burnout, or spammy DMs. We were introduced by our mutual friend Jennifer Laner, who told me I had to talk to him, and when Jen talks, I listen. So in this episode, you’re going to discover how artists are using LinkedIn to sell high ticket art to corporate collectors and CEOs. The three post a week bookend method that gets you seen by buyers, even if you’re new to the platform and why hashtags can make or break your visibility, and how to choose ones that attract collectors, not just other artists. So if you’ve been sleeping on LinkedIn, get ready to wake up because this platform might just be your most powerful sales tool yet. Please welcome to the The Inspiration Place Scott Aaron. Well hey there Scott, welcome to the show. And we’re just diving in without small talk today. Is that okay?
Scott Aaron: Yeah. No, I mean.
Miriam Schulman: Let’s do it.
Scott Aaron: Yeah. I’m game.
Miriam Schulman: Here’s the thing. I have started really enjoying LinkedIn myself. Oh, good. And what I’ve noticed is that the way I get new followers is when I comment on other people’s stuff. Okay. And when I repost like that seems to be the. Do you think that is like the number one strategy you tell your clients, by the way?
Scott Aaron: So if you’re going to repost content.
Miriam Schulman: With my own stuff on top, like.
Scott Aaron: Repost it with your own thoughts.
Miriam Schulman: Yes.
Scott Aaron: And as far as commenting on other people’s stuff, that is definitely a part of my strategy that I teach. But in a cadence where you’re not spending hours a day doing it.
Miriam Schulman: Okay, here’s my question for you. Because if I just open LinkedIn, I’m only going to I’m going to see all the stuff my husband’s commenting on.
Scott Aaron: Right.
Miriam Schulman: How do I, like, curate the right people to comment on? Like there’s there’s no like, interest list. Like how do you how do you do that?
Scott Aaron: So LinkedIn has something it’s based on your recent activity. So there’s a couple things that happen when you search and connect for new people on LinkedIn to connect with, because you’re given 100 connection invites every week that you should use up, right? And you have to be strategic about who you invite to connect with you. They should either be a potential ideal client or a business ally, someone that can refer business or may have ideal clients within their sphere. And what happens is when you start connecting with the right people, much like other social media platforms, they will show you any recent content that that person has published in the last two weeks if they’ve posted it. And again, that would enable you to start engaging with the right types of people. So if you’re engaging with a specific demographic, profession or industry title, LinkedIn is going to start to show you more of that type of person or avatar, whether it’s someone in your first degree of connections or if one of your first degree of Grave connections, commented on a second connection of yours, a first of theirs. You’re going to start to see some of those. You may see something like one of your connections. Xyz person commented on this post. You should check it out.
Scott Aaron: Now here’s the thing. To maximize the ability of what you just said as far as commenting and then gaining a following from it, you have to be very strategic about who you’re commenting on. If you comment on someone’s content where it’s getting crickets. You can’t get anything from it. Meaning you have to first look for a piece of content that A you resonate with, whether it’s the quote that they posted, if it was a quote tile or a video that they posted, or the text post, whatever it is, you first have to resonate with it. So that’s the first thing that you have to look at. The second thing is the organic engagement. Are people engaging with it, liking, insightful, supporting, but also commenting? Because LinkedIn has two types of comments, they have most recent comments and most relevant comments. Most relevant is what you’re shooting for, because what that does is LinkedIn bumps that comment to the top of the comment feed. So if that post is getting a ton of engagement, your comment is going to get all the visibility and only you can see this. I can’t see your insights, but as you comment on people’s stuff, you can see how many impressions your comments are getting on that person’s post.
Miriam Schulman: Okay, first of all, I just want to underline something you said here to make sure all my listeners heard it. Scott says that you should be connecting with 100 people per week. So I’m going to ask you some follow up questions about that in a moment. But one question I have is that there was one post that I read this morning. I was like, oh yeah, this really resonates with me. But the guy had posted it like 14 hours ago, and so there was already like 150 comments on it. And my thought was, oh, why bother? It’s just going to get buried now with all these other people. Is that a false belief or do you think there’s something to that?
Scott Aaron: Yeah, the LinkedIn algorithm runs a lot. Well, there’s there’s up to 20 different algorithms right now running on LinkedIn at any given time. And they change every 60 minutes, which means you can’t really keep up with it. But the longevity and visibility aspect of content lasts much, much longer on LinkedIn than other platforms. And here’s why. The average user on Facebook posts at least once a day. The average user on Instagram posts at least twice a day. So they add something to their story and their feed. LinkedIn. Only 1% of the LinkedIn population publishes one or more posts per week. So what does that tell you? That tells you that your content will have more legs as far as visibility and reach, much more than any of the other platforms. Meaning if you post something, you will start to see engagement for hours and even days. So I’m still getting comments and engagements on a post today, the day that we’re recording this. It’s a Thursday from Monday. So 72, almost 96 hours later, I’m still getting engagement. So your content. So even though what that post that you resonated with that was getting all the comments was 14 hours ago. Yeah, it’s still within really good reason to then add your insights in a comment on that as well.
Miriam Schulman: So even though there’s hundreds of comments, people will still see my thing because of the.
Scott Aaron: It’ll be most recent and if people start engaging with it. So I made a comment on Gary Vaynerchuk’s post about a month or two ago, and it got bumped up to Most Relevant. It ended up having like 30 comments. It had about seven or 17 or 18 likes. And again, to your point, I ended up getting new followers from it because it was Gary Vaynerchuk’s post that had 1700 likes and 200 comments, but mine was the top featured comment.
Miriam Schulman: Okay, all right, all right. Now every answer you give me makes another question, which I love. So tip number one was connect with 100 people per week. Tip number two how many times per week is the ideal number to post?
Scott Aaron: So I usually start people off. So my wife and I have a private content community called the Expert Content Society. And we typically recommend for people that are just getting into the beginning cadence of being visible on LinkedIn with their content to post three times a week. I call it the bookend methodology. So a post on Monday, a post on Wednesday, and a post on Friday and what that looks like from a type of content, you have two different variations of that. The first variation is an image text post on Monday. So that’s a personally branded photo of you. Or it was funny. I was on another artist podcast earlier this week, so there’s a lot of things that I recommend to people in the artistic space of showcasing the visual to what you do, so it could be a picture of a recent piece. It could be in the process of. It could be a sketch drawing like my my sister in law from scratch made my wife’s engagement ring. And what she did was she had she drew the blueprint for it, she signed it and basically gave us the rough draft of what it was going to look like. And that’s something that would be really impactful to share. Or it could be a picture of you actually at your craft. It could be a picture of you drawing or painting or writing or whatever the case may be, and then some text to go with it. Typically in a storytelling or thought leadership fashion. That is what LinkedIn is pushing out most. They are pushing out thought leadership storytelling that really connects and resonates with the audience. So that’s what I typically recommend on a Monday.
Miriam Schulman: Hey, I’m so sorry to interrupt, but if you want to check out Scott’s Content Society, the Expert Content Society. I have a link for you to go get it. Go to SchulmanArt.com/Scott. That’s SchulmanArt.com/Scott. All right, let’s continue on.
Scott Aaron: Wednesday is Market Research day. So much like other platforms, LinkedIn allows you to create polls. Now, there are a lot of people that like LinkedIn polls, and there’s a lot of people that hate LinkedIn polls. Now, the people that hate LinkedIn polls is because they’re seeing the stupid ones, like, when do you put up your Christmas tree? You know, after Thanksgiving? Or, you know, how do you like your coffee, black sugar and cream or whatever? Like that’s not what you use. A LinkedIn poll question for a LinkedIn poll question is to find out areas of pain, areas of curiosity, struggle or business. Right? So to give you an example, this past week, the theme of this past week for me and my content was how people are abusing the user agreement and getting kicked off of LinkedIn every single day. And what’s causing that to happen? So I asked a very simple poll question have you ever gotten restricted on LinkedIn? And it’s getting a lot of engagement, close to 100 votes. There’s about 12 or 13 comments, but it tells me that if people vote for yes, they’re going to really like my newsletter edition on Friday because it’s all about how not to get restricted and abused the LinkedIn user agreement. So all of your content really folds into each other. So that brings me to the Friday post where you have two options. Here are the variations. If you are a front facing visual type of person, you may want to do a video.
Scott Aaron: Now that can be a vertical form video right from your phone where you literally can just record yourself just holding it, just like you would any other platform, and you directly post it right to LinkedIn. You can record horizontal video on zoom as long as it’s under ten minutes, and you can directly upload it to LinkedIn as well. Put some captions that are auto captioned through LinkedIn, but some text to go with it. Or the other variation, which is my favorite variation, are LinkedIn newsletter editions. This is what really makes LinkedIn, I would say, above all the other platforms, is that you have your own almost like Substack newsletter built within LinkedIn. So I have close to 36,000 followers on my personal LinkedIn profile. I have a LinkedIn newsletter called LinkedIn Tips and Updates that has close to 11,000 subscribers, and there are people that aren’t following me my there. They just subscribed to my newsletter because it pops up as a suggested newsletter, because it’s people that are interested in learning LinkedIn tips and updates and features. But LinkedIn newsletters allow you because you’re allowed 100,000 characters if you love to write. If you really like to just give so much value that builds that know, like and trust and you can add pictures, you can add videos, you can add hyperlinks. It just elevates your brand so much.
Scott Aaron: But it also gives you a warm touch point, meaning you can see every single person that subscribes. And if they’re a first connection, you can message them and say thank you for subscribing. If they’re a second or third connection, you can connect with them and you can add a. Thanks for subscribing to my newsletter. We’d love to connect. It’s reasons that LinkedIn is giving you to reach out to those people. But I would say, Miriam, the the number one thing that I love the most about LinkedIn, as far as the newsletters go, they help you grow it. How do they help you grow it from the onset of publishing your first ever newsletter edition? LinkedIn auto invites for you every single first connection that you have to subscribe to your newsletter. So when I launched my newsletter three years ago, I probably had about 13 or 14,000 followers. I had 1000 subscribers within a week because they auto invite all my first degree connections. So they help you get it started, but they help you to continue to grow it. And they do that in three different ways. Number one, as soon as you release a new newsletter edition, there’s a little notification bell that we all have access to. It’s called our notification section. LinkedIn notifies every single subscriber of my newsletter when I release a new edition every Friday, as soon as it publishes.
Scott Aaron: They get a notification. Check out the latest newsletter edition from LinkedIn. Tips and updates by Scott Aaron. The second thing if you’re using those 100 invite credits per week that you’re given and you connect with the right people and they accept, LinkedIn turns around after they accept and auto invites them, hey, you just connected with Miriam. Why don’t you subscribe to our newsletter here? And the third and final thing is LinkedIn has its own private email campaigns that are tied to your newsletter edition. So if someone opts in for email communication from LinkedIn, which most people do, not everybody. But if you’ve ever gotten an email from LinkedIn like so and so, looked at your profile so and so sent you a connection, you have a couple unread messages, right? That’s email communication from LinkedIn. Anytime that you publish a newsletter edition and the subscribers of your newsletter have their email communication on LinkedIn, emails them your newsletter for you and they actually show you the KPIs from that. They will show you in your dashboard how many emails they sent to your subscribers and what the email open rate was. So you can see the deliverability of how many people on your subscriber list are actually interested in what they’ve subscribed to. Which just blows me away. And this is all with the free version of LinkedIn. You don’t have to pay for any of this.
Miriam Schulman: To get to ask you that there. I mean, you’re dropping like gem after gem after gem, and I hope my listeners are all taking notes right now. So for artists, this would be the content would be like what they would have put into a traditional blog. Am I right about that?
Scott Aaron: It’s spot on because I’ve had people ask me, hey, if I already have a blog on my website, can I just repurpose since it’s already been created and start it through my LinkedIn newsletter? And my answer every time is yes. Don’t.
Miriam Schulman: Okay. And then for somebody like you and me, it’s basically the same content I’m putting on the podcast, but just clean it up in a newsletter form, is that right?
Scott Aaron: 100%. 100%.
Miriam Schulman: And then I want to you had talked about the three times a week method and what I’m hearing from you. And I just want to make sure the listeners understand it, if I’m right about this is that you are seeding content Monday and Wednesday that feed into who would be interested in the content you’re going to drop on Friday so that it sends a signal to LinkedIn like, oh, these people liked this. Make sure they get that. Is that is that what I’m hearing from you?
Scott Aaron: So I’ll give you an example. So sometimes I switch out my routine. So Monday this past Monday I did a training on the most common mistake that someone makes on LinkedIn that gets them restricted. And it’s using automated tools that violates user agreements. I was kind of like going through this little checklist, right? So that kind of kicked it off. I was raising awareness around a problem that people are having on LinkedIn. Like this may be why you’re getting restricted, which fed into my market research. You know what? I’m curious not so much about how many people watch that training, but within my LinkedIn ecosystem, how many people have ever gotten restricted? I asked the question, and then from that, I then take a deep, deep dive. So it’s basically parts of what I talked about in a video on Monday with the market research that I did on Wednesday, that allows me to provide deep solutions and strategy on Friday in my LinkedIn newsletter edition.
Miriam Schulman: Okay. So like in real time, when you send out your newsletter, you are saying 40% of the poll people all said they got this and you might be next or whatever it is that. Yeah, okay. By the way, anyone who’s listening and not watching, he is like nodding his head like a bobble head right now. Okay, beautiful. Scott. Talk to me about hashtags. Are they important? Oh, they are important.
Scott Aaron: Yeah. So yeah, again, there’s two sides I would say to a lot of strategy on LinkedIn. My wife and I are on the side of because you can still follow a hashtag. So for anyone that’s listening or watching, go on the LinkedIn, find a piece of content that you like that has hashtags and click on the hashtag. What it will do is it will take you to crazy enough that hashtags home feed. So every hashtag has a home feed, and on that home feed, it shows you how many people are following that hashtag and its own news feed of content of every single person that has recently posted something with that hashtag. Now, if you want to reverse engineer this because I see your your eyes going a.
Miriam Schulman: Little bit, there’s there. So there are light bulbs like appearing. So so I know what.
Scott Aaron: You’re I know what you’re thinking already because I’m about to say it. So how you can reverse engineer hashtags if there’s a specific hashtag that, you know, maybe an ideal client or a power partner may use, look for a piece of content, follow that hashtag, and then go through the feed of all the people that are using that hashtag that could fall into those buckets, because then you can start connecting with those people. You can start engaging in their content, commenting, liking, nurturing. Now on, I would say the creator side. So that was more on the engaging side. That’s something that I would do. I would try to find people that use those hashtags that fit maybe something that I offer from the creator side, meaning I am the creator of that post. I always recommend using three hashtags.
Miriam Schulman: Okay, only three, only three.
Scott Aaron: So it’s not Instagram because if you ever hear me, if you ever go on LinkedIn and you see someone that has 74 hashtags, they’ve probably just copied their post from Instagram and just plastered it right on LinkedIn.
Miriam Schulman: Instagram doesn’t like it either, by the way. Listeners. Okay, they don’t, but no.
Scott Aaron: So I use three across the board whenever I’m doing hashtags. So LinkedIn did release an article maybe 18 months ago or so that basically said three is kind of like the magic. Number two is okay, four and above is too much. Because what happens is we recommend using two hashtags that are directly related to the content that you’re sharing. So if anyone ever reads my content, I always use hashtag LinkedIn, hashtag LinkedIn tips, hashtag business, right? Or it could be something tied directly Rectly to my business. So a more personal hashtag. So because you can create your own hashtag and you could tell people follow my hashtag and here’s why. If people follow a hashtag, LinkedIn will start to refilter their newsfeed with things that that person wants to see by actions that they have taken. One of those actions is following a hashtag. So say I use the hashtag Expert Content Society. That’s our private membership, right? And I start using that in every post. I start doing a direct call to action. And don’t forget to follow Hashtag Expert Content Society. You know, to learn more about X, Y and Z, people that are seeing my content, start clicking on it. Start following it. Now, anything I ever post that includes that hashtag will then be shown to those people that are following that hashtag, as long as I use the hashtag. So it’s a way to, you know, top a funnel, start getting more specific people to see your content outside of the, I would say, greater ecosystem and general people that may be seeing it just on the regular feed.
Miriam Schulman: Okay. And so you’re changing your three hashtags or not. You’re just keeping with those same three all the time. Or do you vary it to try to track different people?
Scott Aaron: I do, depending upon like what I’m talking like. This week I used a couple different ones. I used hashtag user agreement, hashtag LinkedIn user agreement because there are people that actually search for that. So and you know, my video on Monday did really well. It had about 4 or 500 views within the first like couple hours. So it did really well because it’s not so much about, I would say the targeted content, but the hashtags definitely do help. There are some people that don’t use any hashtags at all, so here’s what I always recommend. I always recommend split testing. So my word is not the law. I don’t own LinkedIn. I abide by the user agreement. I’ve read it multiple times. But as an online marketing professional, I know the power of split testing. So if someone’s watching or listening and they’re like, man, I just don’t know what I should do. Should I do hashtags? Should I not do hashtags? Well, here’s my advice. The first two weeks of the new month. So say it’s December 1st and you’re going to commit to doing three posts per week, just like I suggested those first two weeks. Those six pieces of content that you create include no hashtags, just the content. Space it out nicely. Thought leadership, storytelling. The back end two weeks still create your six pieces of content over those two weeks, but use three targeted hashtags.
Scott Aaron: Then at month’s end, go back and look at your analytics. Did your hashtag post or non hashtag posts get more impressions? Did they have more engagements? Did they have more comments? Did they have more likes? Look for patterns. Look for rhymes and reasons to either a include hashtags moving forward or not include hashtags. I do the same thing and I make the recommendation. Miriam for people that are weary, should I just do a text only post or should I do an image text post? Well, try them both the first two weeks of the month. Do text only the last two weeks of the month do image text. I did the same thing for me and hands down people love seeing pictures of me and my wife with my content. They do. They just do. We’re like, we run our company together, you know, we are the owners of the business and we’re married in life and married in business. And a lot of our content is predicated around that. So every week I do a text post with an image of us, whether it’s something social or professional branded. But I know from the market research that I have done, the analytics that I’ve looked at is that people prefer the image text, and it’s probably because she’s so pretty, but it’s the image text instead of just the text only.
Miriam Schulman: Hey, if you feel like you’ve tried everything and it still hasn’t worked, then you’re going to want to check out my Artpreneur Boot camp. Inside, you’ll learn the exact five part framework that’s helped thousands of artists raise their prices, attract collectors, and finally sell with confidence. And this Friday, we’re offering a very special VIP Vault Edition. You’ll get the private coaching sessions where artists had real time breakthroughs, pricing, makeovers and gallery wins. You’ll get the full Boot Camp experience, three game changing training sessions, the complete workbook and access to the Artist Insight panel, and every VIP aha moment, but all on demand. Don’t wait for permission to thrive, head on over to SchulmanArt.com/Bootcamp and unlock your next level. Okay, so we’re going to take a pause from all of this, like knowledge bombs you’re dropping. Because I have to ask you, did you and your wife enjoy the things that I accidentally sent you from Amazon? So just he looks like. Okay, so what happened was.
Scott Aaron: Wait, wait, wait, was it was it was it a blanket.
Miriam Schulman: A blanket, earrings and a shirt?
Scott Aaron: I you want to hear the funniest thing? Oh, my God, my wife.
Miriam Schulman: Let me let me just set this up. So what happened was my team sent Scott a book and I have a new VA and she made it like the default address. And I went shopping on Amazon. You got the book. And then all of a sudden I saw your package is going to arrive, and I’m not going to say the name of your town, new Jersey, or whatever it is. I was like, oh shit. And then I couldn’t cancel the order and I did get a refund. But Amazon, I thought I sent you an email, but maybe your team filtered it or went to spam or whatever. And I just was like, don’t worry, I sent something by mistake. Don’t worry about it. You don’t have to do anything. Well it’s funny. So tell me, tell me, did you enjoy the blanket?
Scott Aaron: So we’ve recently redone our home gym, and, like, I was taking out boxes and stuff from the equipment that we ordered, and I saw this one box. I don’t know how long it had been sitting there because, like, we have, like, a pile of boxes to be opened. So I noticed this one box. I’m like, I’m like, what? What’s that box? And she goes, it’s addressed to you. And I’m like, huh, what’s in it? And she goes, it looks like it’s a fur blanket.
Miriam Schulman: Okay, that’s a really nice blanket. I splurged on that. I hope you guys are enjoying it.
Scott Aaron: So like and my son was here and he goes, dad, why did you order a fur blanket? I’m like, I didn’t order a fur blanket.
Miriam Schulman: Not real. And for anyone who cares, what’s that? Not real fur for anyone not who cares? Yeah.
Scott Aaron: So I’m like, maybe this was something that we ordered for Sia or Pepper for Hanukkah, and it just came now, and I’m like, I don’t know, but the dog, we have four dogs.
Miriam Schulman: Oh, no, the dog is using it. This is like this blanket is over $100. It’s like, so I followed this influencer and they had the expensive version and then the cheap version, and I was like, ah, I gotta have that blanket. Oh, it’s so expensive. It’s I’m just gonna buy it anyway. And then, like, I bought it with all the other stuff in my car, but it all went to Scott. Yeah, and now his dog is using it. That kills me.
Scott Aaron: So we have, like, this big wraparound couch in our basement, and we have, like, tons of pillows, tons of blankets. Right. And all, they’re all, like, soft, cushy, like, velvety. And it fit right in. And Nancy, Nancy put it down like, on there. And then I went to go sit on the couch and we have they’re all like, we have little or we have two chocolate mini schnauzers, and the two schnauzers were curled up in a little ball loving life and this blanket. But it’s really comfortable and.
Miriam Schulman: Oh yeah, I know it looked really nice. Could you send a picture of the dogs on the blanket for the YouTube video? Yeah, that would be awesome. And I don’t know if any of your family are wearing the earrings.
Scott Aaron: So we end up getting these earrings a few months ago, right?
Miriam Schulman: Yes.
Scott Aaron: And Nancy’s like, did you order earrings? And I’m like, no. And she’s like, did your mom like that? He she thinks.
Miriam Schulman: You’re cheating on him or whatever. Like, is this for your girlfriend?
Scott Aaron: I’m like, I’m like, Nance, I don’t know what to tell you. I, I know Nancy probably, you know, I probably gave them to her to put, like, she has a whole jewelry area, but thank you. Like I it was one of those unexpected, you know, it’s.
Miriam Schulman: And there was a shirt too that came that matched the earrings.
Scott Aaron: It’s like it’s like Nancy probably opened something. But either way.
Miriam Schulman: You’re welcome.
Scott Aaron: I mean, that’s you’re a mensch. And that’s obviously, you.
Miriam Schulman: Know, I do not give all my podcast guests for blankets just in case there’s any other guests listening. And then what was funny was the same day that I realized I totally screwed up and that all this stuff was going.
Scott Aaron: I’ve done the.
Miriam Schulman: Same thing the same day. We we received a huge box of cat food that was not for our cat. That was like these huge cat food and then and also Gatorade. And it turned out my sister did the same exact thing on the same day. Yeah. My sister. It was addressed to me. And it took a while before we found out that, you know, she.
Scott Aaron: So did you get cat food and Gatorade? I got a blanket, earrings and a shirt.
Miriam Schulman: I think you got a better deal.
Scott Aaron: It’s like that. What was that show like? Let’s make a deal. Right behind. Who knows what’s behind the door, right?
Miriam Schulman: What’s in this box?
Scott Aaron: Looks like you’re getting the. You’re getting the blanket and the earrings. Or I might walk away with the Gatorade and cat food. Who knows?
Miriam Schulman: Yeah, right.
Scott Aaron: But thank you. I mean, I will definitely take a picture and I’ll send it to you.
Miriam Schulman: Okay. Fantastic.
Miriam Schulman: All right, so I had a question about the hashtags because I want to make sure my artists understand this because they do the same problem on Instagram, which is they use hashtags that only artists use, and then they wonder why only artists are now following them on Instagram. So I know you have a lot of artists in your family and your community. What do you tell them so they can like find those collectors rather than just art? Like they’re picking things like mixed media or hashtag, which, you know.
Scott Aaron: Yeah, I would say and I had this conversation on a podcast I was on earlier this week, is that for any artist that has, you know, high end art? We talked about this my, you know, my, my mother in law is a world renowned glass artist.
Miriam Schulman: And we would love to have her art on my YouTube channel too, if you want to send me pictures.
Scott Aaron: Yeah, she’s she’s a she’s got a show coming up. She does like, glass costumes and stuff. It’s it’s she’s pretty amazing. Like I’ll, I’ll. Yeah. Nancy Dubois is is her name. The interesting thing is that LinkedIn is the perfect demographic for Or artists that have high value art to sell. Because this is the advice that I gave to the other podcasters. I think about the demographic of the people on LinkedIn. They’re 35 to 55 years old, which means they’re established, right? Number two, they make an average of 75 to $100,000 a year more. So who collects art? It’s people with expendable revenue where it is a hobby to them and one that they enjoy. But also it’s a lot of business professionals. So if you think about a lot of the people that that we may know that collect high end art, they are more likely than not tied to specific industries or specific professions. So again, you can work kind of backwards and start including specific hashtags that maybe be your ideal buyer would be falling or would be looking for. And I think that’s another way, and I would say a great way to use hashtags that don’t think it’s so much from the driver’s seat, which is, you know, the view of where you’re coming from. Focus on the passenger side. Right? So that’s why I put LinkedIn tips or LinkedIn help, because I’m not going to put LinkedIn expert, because what would that do that would attract other LinkedIn coaches, which it’s not that I don’t support them. I’m looking to build my own little ecosystem over here. So that’s why I’ll do like LinkedIn help or LinkedIn tips, things that my ideal client would really want to search for, look for, follow, and maybe even connect with.
Miriam Schulman: So I don’t know if this is a real hashtag that anyone would ever use. But one of the case studies I talk about with my clients is Casey Lin Hancock, who I shared with you, and she targets CEOs. So she uses like hashtag CEO something, something. I don’t know if she uses hashtag CEO decor, but that’s kind of the idea. Like C-suite decor. That’s kind of idea. Okay.
Scott Aaron: No, that’s it’s I, I remember you telling me all about her, and I looked at her stuff. It’s unbelievable what she’s doing on there. Barb the welder, she’s another one. She’s got a great she’s a professional welder, but she does high end art. And again, she’s really built a great personal brand on on LinkedIn the same exact way. And it’s it’s a really great way to get in front of more people.
Miriam Schulman: Yeah. And just to tease people for Casey Lynn Hancock, she is selling paintings between 30,000 and 100,000 each. Yeah, it takes her a few months though. It’s not like a sell it overnight and you can like I broke down her strategy, which I teach inside my program and the Artist Incubator say, look at what she’s done. This is how you can reverse engineer. And it took her from like July to, I want to say October to sell a shark painting that she sold for $70,000. But we’ll take it.
Scott Aaron: But she she does it the right way because she, you know, she does videos where she’s doing the progression of the painting, right? She shows, you know, all the stuff that goes into it. So that’s how you build that personal brand. You know, on LinkedIn, she’s got 60,000 followers. So she has a growing target audience of target buyers. And when you’re talking about, you know, if she was just to sell, just an example, if she sold one painting a month, right. As an example, that’s almost $400,000 a year right there. Yeah. Off of 12 sales.
Miriam Schulman: Yeah. Fantastic. Okay. So in terms of your very first tip, which is connect with 100 people per week. Do you think we should research it using hashtags, or is there another way to research? Like who do we find those people to connect with?
Scott Aaron: Yeah, using the search engine within LinkedIn. So there’s there’s two ways to do it. If you have the paid version of LinkedIn, you have unlimited searches, which means you can search till the cows come home. I use the free version of LinkedIn. It’s just how I’ve leveraged it, and I haven’t needed the paid version. With the free version, you’re limited to about 12 to 15 searches total per month. So my connection strategy is searching and connecting with about 15 people a day Monday, Wednesday, Friday. So connect with 15 people Monday, Wednesday and Friday through searches. So in the search bar. So just as an example, I could search business coach comma podcast host and that will give me and then I filter by second connections because those are the people that I want to connect with. That’s my first connections, first connections that will give me anyone within the 35,000 plus networks that I’m a part of. Anyone that has business coach and or podcast host or both in their profile, and then I can go and I specifically can see their headline and decide if that’s someone that I want to connect with or not. And I just click connect on the 15 people that I feel I resonate most with. If I had a conversation based on their headline and what they do now, if you have the paid version of LinkedIn, you can do that every single day. I can search podcast host one day, I can search business coach, the second day business consultant, the third day luxury art dealer, the fourth day. Whatever I want to do, right, I can I can search for every. You can’t connect with more than 100 people in a week, but you can just search Unlimitedly I see.
Miriam Schulman: So whether you’re paid or unpaid, it’s.
Scott Aaron: 100 across the.
Miriam Schulman: Board.
Scott Aaron: That’s it, 100 across the board.
Miriam Schulman: Okay.
Scott Aaron: So the other two days during the week where you’re not searching, there’s an area on LinkedIn that’s called my network. It’s got these two little heads next to it, and it’s where LinkedIn will give you quote unquote suggested connections. So LinkedIn will give you suggested connections based on a number of different things, your business background. So whatever industry you’re in, other people like you, your recent activity, your education, people that may be in a similar group or maybe tied to you in some way, shape or form. So I call these the silver platter connections. So they will basically spoon feed you people that they feel based on your profile, your recent activity and what you do. These people would be great connections and all you have to do is again, scroll through, find the first 15 people that you resonate most with and just click connect. People don’t realize the reason why they’re not getting more visibility, and they’re not having better results on LinkedIn is that they’re not growing their networks. Linkedin is giving you 400 connection invites every single month. That’s 5000 people a year that you have the ability to connect with, and people aren’t using them.
Miriam Schulman: So including me, I’m not using it either. By the way, I’m a newbie, just like everybody listening. I’m soaking all of this in. And Scott, for people who want to know more, tell me about your expert content society. Did I get the name?
Scott Aaron: Yes. So what Nancy and I did was she’s just an absolute wizard with back end operations, AI systems and strategy. And she actually builds custom gpts, which are basically customized prompts that basically they ask you questions, you answer them, and at the end it gives you an output. Now that output could be an email that you want to send or sales copy. In our case, it’s content for LinkedIn. Because we work with creatives, we work with coaches, consultants, service professionals that know that they want to be on LinkedIn and they know that they need to be producing content. They just have no clue where to start or what to do. So what do they do? They end up posting generic content that gets no engagement, or they just start repurposing content from other platforms. That’s not getting engagement. Nancy and I study the algorithms, and we look every single day. If we come across something that we feel is getting good engagement, we take notes on it like, let’s try a post like this. So every month in our community, our members get access to 24 different prompts every month that are themed around thought leadership and storytelling. And they. They’re different every month. So you’re going to have different content every month. But the cool thing is you get six posts per week, and that means there’s six different types of content.
Scott Aaron: So we have beginner content and advanced content. Beginner content is an image text post, a poll question, and a quote tile. Advanced posts are carousel posts, video scripts, and newsletter editions. So people that are really understanding of leveraging LinkedIn and they start to kind of get their feet under them. You have up to six posts per week that you can then post onto LinkedIn. So every month that goes by, you’re released 24 new prompts. So the the community right now is about six months old. So we have close to 175 different prompts that people can use over and over again. You can mix and match and it’s also a community. So we have community threads where people can ask the community or myself or Nancy questions about LinkedIn. People can share their analytics. We have challenges. We have community check in calls, answering questions. We have a bi monthly networking event where people can share about their business and ask for referrals, and we love it. And for those that really want to start creating really great content on LinkedIn, that increases your visibility, increases your reach, increases business opportunities, and generates leads and sales. That’s exactly why we created this community.
Miriam Schulman: So if you want to try it out, go to SchulmanArt.com/Scott. That’s SchulmanArt.com/Scott. You shared so much with us today. Do you have any last words for our audience before we call this complete.
Scott Aaron: The best piece of advice that I give people when, especially when they’re starting on LinkedIn. Linkedin is a marathon. It’s not a sprint. It’s not a get quick rich type of platform where you’re going to get on there. And I think you summed it up beautifully that, you know, when an artist is on there, sometimes it takes 3 or 4 months for something to come to fruition, right? So you need to if you go in with the mindset of, you know what, I’m committing to LinkedIn. I’m not just committing to it. I’m going to take action for an entire year for an entire 12 months. I promise you, when it’s done the right way and you put the right time, energy and effort into it, it’s going to return everything and more of what you wish. Treat it like a 401 K. It’s a retirement fund. You don’t invest once and create generational wealth.
Miriam Schulman: Right? You don’t try something once and say, that didn’t work for me.
Scott Aaron: Exactly. No one goes to the gym once works out, and walks out looking like Arnold Schwarzenegger. It takes time, dedication, and constant work, right? So treat it just like that. Make those daily deposits allow the compounded interest to take place because again, it’s those small compounded things and actions that you take each day that create the large result at the end that you’re looking for.
Miriam Schulman: All right, my friend, thank you for being with me here today. And thank you. I’ll see you the same time, same place next week. Until then, stay inspired. Bye for now.
Speaker 2: Thank you for listening to the The Inspiration Place podcast. Connect with us on Facebook at facebook.com/SchulmanArt, on Instagram at @SchulmanArt, and of course, on SchulmanArt.com.
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